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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Eyes of Hate (by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1933)

Eyes of Hate. A candid photograph of Joseph Goebbels after he finds out his photographer is Jewish. (Photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Here, the photo was taken in 1933 by LIFE magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt (a German-born Jew), one of his most memorable pictures. In 1933, he traveled to Lausanne and Geneva for the fifteenth session of the League of Nations. There, sitting in the hotel garden, was Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda. “He smiles, but not at me.” Eisenstaedt recalled in his 1985 book’s Eisenstaedt on Eisenstaedt: A Self-Portrait “He was looking at someone to my left. . . . Suddenly he spotted me and I snapped him. His expression changed. Here are the eyes of hate. Was I an enemy? Behind him is his private secretary, Walter Naumann, with the goatee, and Hitler’s interpreter, Dr. Paul Schmidt. . . . I have been asked how I felt photographing these men. Naturally, not so good, but when I have a camera in my hand I know no fear.”

Goebbels before knowing that the photographer was Jewish. (Photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Eisenstaedt had photographed Goebbels sitting on his own outside in the courtyard, had approached him and taken this photograph of him with a warm smile, and then moments later was confronted with this, when Goebbels had learned of Eisenstaedts 'true identity'.